The carrying of any rifle or shotgun concealed on the person shall constitute a felony.

The penalties for hunting with any gun specially adapted to concealment should be not less than $50 fine or two months imprisonment at hard labor, and the carrying of such weapons concealed should be $100 or four months at hard labor.

Incidentally, we wonder what will be the next devilish device for the destruction of wild life that American inventive genius will produce.

[Illustration:  THE “SUNDAY GUN!” A Deadly Combination of Concealable Rifle-and-Shot-Gun.]

[Illustration:  THE WILDERNESS OF NORTH AMERICA (SHADED) AND THE ARCTIC PRAIRIES, WELL STOCKED WITH BIG GAME]

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVI

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF NORTH AMERICAN BIG GAME

The subject of this chapter opens up a vast field of facts and conclusions, quite broad enough to fill a whole volume.  In the space at our disposal here it is possible to offer only a summary of the subject, without attempting to prove our statements by the production of detailed evidence.

To say that all over the world, the large land mammals are being destroyed more rapidly than they are breeding, would not be literally true, for the reason that there are yet many areas that are almost untouched by the destroying hand of civilized man.  It is true, however, that all the unspoiled areas rapidly are growing fewer and smaller.  It is also true that in all the regions of the earth that are easily penetrable by civilized man, the wild life is being killed faster than it breeds, and of necessity it is disappearing.  This is why the British are now so urgently bestirring themselves to create game preserves in all the countries that they own.

It is one of the inexorable laws of Nature, to which I know of not one exception, that large hoofed animals which live on open plains, on open mountains, or in regions that are thinly forested, always are easily found and easily exterminated.  All such animals have a weak hold on life.  This is because it is so difficult for them to hide, and so very easy for man to creep up within the killing range of modern, high-power, long-range rifles.  Is it not pitiful to think of animals like the caribou, moose, white sheep and bear trying to survive on the naked ridges and bald mountains of Yukon Territory and Alaska!  With a modern rifle, the greatest duffer on earth can creep up within killing distance of any of the big game of the North.

The gray wolf is practically the only large animal that is able to hide successfully and survive in the treeless regions of the North; but his room is always preferable to his company, because he, too, is a destroyer of big game.